Budawangs getaway!

I got away for a few days recently to the Budawangs, the terrific little mountain range, the best of which is in the Morton National Park, rather than the neighbouring Budawangs National Park.

It's about 200km south west of Sydney, and it's very much worth the trip. A good introduction is the short but sharp ascent (450m) up Pidgeon House, named by Captain Cook for its appearance (to 1770 eyes at least) as a pidgeon house. 


I took the picture at top of the main Castle Group, which I was to explore during a big day walk, from the top of Pidgeon House. You can also see Byangee Walls, Mount Owen, Mount Nibelung, Mount Mooryan, Mount Cole, the Seven Gods Pinnacles, and the Shrouded Gods Mountain. And what a bushwalkers paradise it all is!

My big day walk involved ascending via the Castle Walk up to Meakins Pass, then up into Monolith Valley, past the most beautiful Pool of Photography I've ever come across, into the Green Room, and on past the Seven Gods Pinnacles. Then it was time to turn around, but there was still time to ascend Mount Owen, via a difficult ill-defined scrambly route, and back down quickly before nightfall.

As for the Castle itself, well you always have to leave something for the next visit, and I've left this one. A bit scary to look at, and those who've been up it try to spook you in the usual way with stories about the big drop and the exposure. But I understand it's not that hard really, very few people actually fall over the edge, and it's therefore quite do-able. So next time, I'll do it!

Attack of the killer magpies!

Every year about this time the lovely, friendly Australian magpie - the ones with the heavenly lilting song, the very essence of Australian suburbia - undergo a terrifying transformation. They all get together for a motivational session where they watch Alfred Hitchcock's training video. Then they get out there and wage war on us.

A couple of years ago one of my cycling companions was knocked unconscious by one of them. She initially had no idea what caused her to be on the ground beside her bike with an ambulance crew in attendance, but later remembered the dreaded black-and-white feathery presence that had nearly caused her demise.

This year it's the turn of another of my fellow bikers. Bob reported being swooped by about eight separate birds within a couple of hours the other day, with one of them taking a piece out of his ear. So I joined him on a mission to track down the offenders, get the photographic evidence, and expose their heinous crimes publicly. We retraced his route along the Western Sydney bike paths, with me following him at a safe distance, my camera ready.

This time we encountered four of the warrior birds, defending their separate territories. All of them swooped him without warning, one giving him a thump as it passed. In two cases the bird went back for several more goes, resting momentarily on branches or power lines between attacks. Needless to say I was never quite ready enough with the camera for the impact shots, but you can get the idea from this series of pics.

We noticed that the attacks all came on his first run past the bird. When he came back for the staged re-enactment photo shoot, the bird would hold off, just watching moodily from a distance. I think that by turning round and coming back, Bob had won the battle and shown he was top bird. And the thing had noticed Bob had a friend with a gun (camera actually).

It's said that magpies identify particular humans, dividing them into friends and enemies on some unknown basis. They have very long memories too, and once you're down as an enemy, you're marked for life.

Black skies over Blacktown

I went out today on a mission to explore the suburb of Blacktown. I'm sure there was lots there to report on - a very large shopping centre and a very colourful melting pot population spring to mind initially - but my attention was hijacked by the dramatic sky and the bushfires raging to the west.

We're only a few days out of winter, but already the temperatures are in the 30s, there's been no real rain for two months, and a hot wind from the north west has resulted in several nasty bushfires on Sydney's western edges. Homes have been destroyed, firefighters injured, schools evacuated, all the usual.

Three days ago my fellow Australians voted in a new Government, led by Tony "Climate Change is Crap" Abbott. He's going to scrap the price on carbon pollution, and concentrate on the important things like chopping down and digging up, boosting the coal industry, and generally doing business as normal but more so.

So we ain't seen nothing yet.

Meet Gary

Gary's my green tree snake. Not mine exactly, but he hangs out in my garden, and he's beautiful!

First spotted the other day straddling the driveway (he's getting on for 2 metres long, so he almost does straddle it), he's now taken to lurking in the undergrowth not far from the front door.

He is indeed a tree snake, and though I've not yet seen him up a tree, I'm sure he's quite comfortable with heights too. In fact the neighbours have previously reported seeing him up in the trees, frightening the other tree dwellers.

Green tree snakes are non-venomous. They're a bit shy, and seem to just freeze when they see you, hoping you've not seen them. If you get too close, they're said to be happy to bite you, and can draw blood. But not much else happens to you. They're found all over the Sydney region, but in rocky sandstone areas, they often spend much of their time on the ground, living in crevices in the rocks.